


Grief

by wolfiefics



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Genre: Alexander's death, M/M, No Sex, loosely based in Mary Renault's storyverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-23 01:53:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17674178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfiefics/pseuds/wolfiefics
Summary: Bagoas deals with the death of his Great King.





	Grief

They had taken him away several hours before and yet the young man was unable to rouse himself from the bedside. He'd been there so long, patiently waiting for a recovery that never came. A miracle from the gods...that never came. He'd been numb after that. He was still numb; it was inconceivable that the Great King, Alexander, lord of his heart, could possibly have left him alone. 

Yet it was true. The empty bed, sheets rumpled and stained with sweat and the fluids of death, told him that Alexander was well and truly gone.

Stumbling, Bagoas the eunuch lurched to his feet, his legs unsteady from lack of use. He hadn't moved from Alexander's sickbed in over a week, both while the king lived and while he didn't. Now exhausted, aggrieved and lethargic, Bagoas began his duties as if by rote. Alexander had hated a dirty room. 

The debris from the small skirmish in the king's bedroom between rival factions still remained strewn everywhere: broken furniture peices, dirt and grass from the outside, and torn cloth from robes and chitons still littered the room. Systematically, as if an automaton, Bagoas carefully picked up each and every peice, nimble fingers placing them in a cloth bag used for waste.

Stepping backward, Bagoas froze at the sound of breaking stone. Turning slowly he stared down at the face of the man Alexander followed into the afterlife: Hephaestion, son of Amyntoros. A slow fury began to build inside him as he turned the decapitated votive in his hand. It was one of hundreds Alexander had received as gifts from his friends and companions, and soldiers in his army, to console him after Hephaestion's unexpected death just a few months earlier. Watching the king stricken with unrelenting grief, even Bagoas had been unable to console Alexander.

Bagoas' brown eyes, still exotically blackened at the rims with kohl despite his earlier tears of grief, rested on each votive face, depicting Hephaestion with either precise skill or clumsy attempts at likeness. Each one had been taken by Alexander and placed reverently on the huge table, a shrine that Alexander insisted would be in his rooms for all time.

Fury rose inside Bagoas. He and the king's best friend had tolerated each other only for the sake of Alexander. The king had loved them both and they him; neither Bagoas nor Hephaestion would have given Alexander cause for grief because they couldn't get along. Their animosity was beneath the surface but never really showed. Now however, the jealousy and agony caused by Hephaestion's existence swept through the young eunuch. The broken statue in his hand was flung against the wall. Words were torn from Bagoas' mouth as he grabbed yet another statue and flung it to join the first.

"You. Took. Him. From. Me!" With each word shouted at the top of his lungs, tearing at his throat, a statue hit the wall, punctuating each word. "Is. This. Your. Revenge. For. Me. Taking. Him. From. YOU?" Half the table's votive were swept to the floor and Bagoas fell on them in a heap. Sobs wracked his body, agony washed through his soul. 

He thought he heard footsteps, a murmuring of voices but he ignored them. They didn't matter anymore, any of them. They were all mere shadows to Alexander and well they knew it. Contempt for himself, for the men who tried to be Alexander's successors, and contempt for the world in general beat down the pain of grief. How long he lay on the debris of broken Hephaestions, he did not know. Darkness passed into dawn; the rising sun brought him to his feet. Marks from lying uncomfortably on the broken stone statuettes scarred him, blood stained his skin where sharp points had dug into his skin without him knowing or caring.

As the sun rose, breaking through the shadows, Bagoas reached for one more votive, a well-made one with a more than passing likeness of the dead man. He clutched it tightly, staring down at the blank eyes. Even now he could see their brown warmth as they stared up at him. Those eyes had always been warm and affectionate in the presence of the king. 

"Bagoas." He looked up and saw two generals, Ptolemy and Perdiccas, standing just inside the door, surveying the wreckage. It was Ptolemy who had softly called his name.

"What have you done?" Perdiccas began hotly but he stopped when Ptolemy placed a hand on his shoulder. Only recently the two generals had been in the midst of a small battle in this very room for control of Alexander's army. 

"Are you all right?" Ptolemy spoke gently again, as if to a spooked horse. 

Bagoas gave them both a dull look and held up the statuette in his hand. "As all right as he would have been in my place."   
Perdiccas opened his mouth to make a comment but thought better of it. Ptolemy regarded Bagoas with understanding and nodded. "Come. You need sleep and food. A bath would not be remiss either." He held out a hand, inviting Bagoas to take it. 

Bagoas pondered the outstretched hand a moment. Ptolemy had never been unkind to him, or unfriendly, but there had never been anything that suggested to Bagoas that Ptolemy understood or approved of Bagoas' existence in Alexander's life. Now, however, that hand seemed a boon, a bridge to a life that Bagoas was as yet unwilling to take.

"Not right now, thank you," Bagoas replied. His voice shook with emotion and was scratchy from disuse and abuse. "I am ... not ready," he finished brokenly. As an afterthought, he held up the votive. "May I keep this one?" 

Perdiccas shrugged indifferently. "By all means," he stated, "take as many as you want to smash against a wall." With that pronouncement, the lean general turned and left the room.

Ptolemy regarded Bagoas a moment longer and nodded. "Certainly. Anything in this room," his outstretched hand made a sweeping gesture, "is yours to take with you, Bagoas. They hold more personal relevance to you than to any of us." He gave the eunuch an encouraging smile and left as well.

With a shudder, Bagoas began to clean again. Alexander had hated a dirty room.

**Author's Note:**

> This ones was written in 2004, probably the summer after I graduated college. I hadn't started my failed attempt at a master's degree and I had taken the summer off. So I had been reading Harry Potter and rereading all the Alexander Trilogy by Mary Renault and pondering what to do with my academic life. Like all my Alexander stories, this was originally written under the penname of Bagoas Alexandros.


End file.
